Love and Service
/(I had the pleasure of spending Holy Thursday morning reflecting and doing some service with the awesome faculty and staff at Archbishop McNicholas High School. Here is some of that reflection, in case it’s helpful.)
Service can be a tremendous act of love. It’s how Jesus chose to demonstrate his love to the people closest to him on the last night he spent with them. When we serve, we love people too. You probably already know this. In whatever capacity you serve, whether it’s professionally or simply in how you live your life (or both), you are loving other people in concrete ways. And when we serve, we allow Christ to love other people through us. We are a vessel for Christ’s love.
Service at its heathiest is mutual, an even flow of give and take. Of course, for some it can be hard to receive love in the form of service. Peter, for example, resists having Jesus wash his feet at first. There’s something familiar about that, at least for me. It’s easy for caretaking to become a role, an identity, and then it’s hard to allow the movement of reciprocation. Also, receiving might mean that I’m in need, which is hard to acknowledge. But I am in need – sometimes. We all are. If I don’t open myself to receive what another person is offering, I miss a chance for someone else to love me, and I miss a chance for Christ to love me through them.
On Palm Sunday we went through the whole story of the Passion, and throughout the Triduum, these three days before Easter, which are really one long commemoration, we’ll kind of pull out and examine each element of this story. And we’ll more than just examine them from arm’s length; hopefully we’ll live into it all, open our minds to imagine all of the events that happen, open our hearts to feel the wide array of emotions that arise. We’ll move this story beyond the historical events of it as we open ourselves to our own story, our own heartbreaks and betrayals, losses, and joys, the times when we have received tremendous acts of love and times when we have loved with our whole hearts.
Over these days, as we follow Scripture, we’ll see the best and the worst of humanity. We’ll see great service, like foot washing, and sacrifice, like Joseph of Arimathea donating a tomb, and Jesus’ loved ones gathering at the foot of the cross and keeping vigil by the tomb. These are truly loving encounters. In addition, though, we’ll witness betrayal, like Peter’s denial and Judas’ kiss, and we’ll see Jesus’ friends fall asleep in his hour of need and then scatter out of fear. And we’ll see greed and violence from the soldiers, religious authorities, and even from the crowd – the mob – gathered. We’ll watch how people respond to trauma and distress; some will accompany each other, some will open themselves to encountering the crucified Christ, some will serve Christ by caring for their communities. Some will be moved to mission – eventually. Actually, most will be moved to mission, after hiding out and running away for a time. They need to encounter the risen Christ before they can move to mission. That’s understandable.
The stories of these days cover the whole gamut of what people are capable of, and as we marked a year since the pandemic came, I’ve been thinking about how this worldwide experience brought out the best and worst of humanity too. Actually, every year probably offers examples of the best and worst of what people are capable of, but I was more attentive to it this year. Maybe it was because everything was so extreme and intense or because I had more time to sit around and consider things. In any case, this year brought it all out – inequity and generosity, violence and peace, selfishness and sharing, fear and bravery, destruction and serving. And as I think about it, the Passion of Christ is the ultimate human story that gets played out again and again in our lives; it’s a mirror for the human story that we are living through and that others have lived through for all time. And it played out very clearly this year.
The pandemic anniversary has come and gone without a dramatic end and sudden change. It has been more of a subtle transformation, a one step forward and two steps back experience. So, the resurrection that we’re longing for might be more gradual than the Easter stories we know. Then again, who knows? Maybe the resurrection of Christ and people’s dawning awareness of it was more gradual in reality than what we have captured in Scripture. Slow, subtle change doesn’t make for really good stories, does it?
But it’s real. At least for me, new life, new beginnings, newfound hope tend to emerge subtlety into my life, and I have to pay close attention or I’ll miss resurrection.
So, how do you find yourself this Holy Week, in 2021, moving toward resurrection Sunday and, God willing, the pandemic resurrection too? Let’s take a moment to pause with all of this and reflect a bit.
As you think about the parts of the passion story – the last supper, prayer in gethsemane, arrest and trial, crucifixion and death, burial, and then the stories of rising – what resonates particularly with you this year?
As we’ve marked a year since the pandemic, how have you experienced the passion story and all the encounter, accompaniment, community, mission that comes with it?
And the foot washing of Holy Thursday – what does serving others mean to you? How are you with receiving care from others? Is it hard? Is it easy? Do you know why you experience others’ care of you this way?
As you look toward the holy days ahead, what do you need from God? What do you need from yourself? I invite you to talk to God about that and even to ask for what you need.
Amen.
By Sister Leslie Keener, CDP
Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, meaningful conversations, and Holy Week.